From SiliconValley.com:
About nine months ago, Steven Boal, founder of Coupons Inc., began to see the fabled hockey-stick-like growth that has made fortunes for so many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.
That’s when he knew a recession was coming. The last time Boal saw this kind of growth was in 2001, after the dot-com collapse. Back then, his company, which provides technology to manufacturers and supermarkets who want to offer online coupons, was still too small to take advantage of the surge in scrimping.